First Impressions

[BenNewman]

My review & gripes

I've been a compulsive civ player for a decade now, and I've got to say my feelings about Civ 3 are mostly negative. After playing for 3 days I've got some major gripes. There are some things I like, such as the revamped AI, but there are a lot of things I'm really starting to hate. So without further delay, here are my gripes:

1. Corruption. I can't stand the corruption model, it's too severe. I understand it was a design decision to make military conquests more difficult, but it just makes things too tough and unrealistic. You can't even simulate a country like the US under the current model. If you tried then Seattle would be a wasteland unable to build a granary. Besides I like playing a world striding giant of a civ. I at least like to have a reasonable chance of taking over an enemy civ that's been throwing it's military at me and being able to eventually control the cities I take over.

2. Lack of worker options. I like the fact that you're able to have your workers automatically clear forests or jungles or be on pollution patrol, but what I really want is a worker scripting language where I can really specify what I want them to do when automated. Something optional, so you only really need to go into if your an anal player like myself, but there none the less. I'd at least like to make it so they stop mining my grassland while on automate. Also, there's a "build road to" command, why not an "irrigate to" command to make a chain of irrigation from fresh water to your city.

3. Strategic resources. I really like the concept, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The main thing that bugs me is not being able to find them on the map. I ran out of coal, great I'll just try and trade it with someone else or wage war on someone to get it. Unfortunately I'm in the lead tech-wise, and no one else has it as a tradable resource. Now my only option is to search the map square by square until I find someone who has it. My eyes aren't what they used to be, and it's a pain in the ass hunting for them. I went to war with the Romans just because I hoped they would have coal somewhere in their territory. Resources that other civs can't use yet should still be tradable. Not only would this make things simpler, but it would be realistic. Imperial England loved doing this sort of thing.

4. Trade. The AI won't accept a fair trade, or even a good trade. It has to be a great trade for them to even consider it. Unfair I say. I am not giving Mao 55 gold a turn just for his territory map.

5. Warning messages. I hate having to scroll all across my world map looking for cities in civil disorder. In just 3 days of playing I can't tell you how many city improvements I've lost because I forgot to adjust a city's happiness. The same goes for building units. I really liked SMAC's option of rebuilding the same unit if there was nothing new to be built. Again, I think it was a bad design decision to take this option away from the player. I want an expanded option screen like SMAC (only more so) where you can select individual warnings and set them them to ignore, flash or stop, set with defaults that are good for a newbie, but that allow veteran players to fully customize things.

6. Wonders. Lots of stuff here. First off not being able to rush them in any way except with a leader. Having not gotten a leader in any of the games I've played I can't say how they help, but the system without them is just awful. Why can't they be rushed? I'd say acquiring the $100000 or whatever it would take would be an accomplishment in and of it's self, and if you've managed it you deserve the wonder. As it stands now with the competing civs being on near equal footing with you it means that the first city to start a wonder usually ends up completing it. Wonders are a great way to pull ahead if you're lagging behind, but if someone starts a Wonder for a tech you don't have yet, forget it, it's lost. The lack of freight/caravans to help building is a real shame too. It just makes sense that if you want to build something that big you would use the resources of all the surrounding citys. When the US made the Apollo program They didn't just use the resources around Cape Canaveral, they pulled in resources from the entire country. Actually, I think freight should be included in the game, and should be able to be added to any production in a city. It would help a lot with the corruption problem as well. I can tell you for sure that creating units in one city and disbanding them in another for the production boost is going to be the first big unintended exploit of the game.

7. Wonder movies. They were fluff, but fluff I really liked. Even after playing SMAC for years I would turn on the movies once every 10 games or so. They really added to the impact of creating this great monument. More importantly, The fact they would tell you what the wonder did was a great help in memorizing the development tree. Now I have to keep hitting the manual to figure out if I want to build something, and I still get Wonder's effects mixed up with their Civ 2 counterparts.

8. Zone's of control. My dislike here might be just because I haven't figured out how to properly extend them yet, but the AI loved to find holes of control within your borders and set up a city in them. This bites. Sure if you have a strong culture rating you'll probably absorb the city, but this just contributes to your corruption problem, and the city is probably in those couple of squares of desert you didn't want anyway. Even worse, if you notice an AI settler trekking through your land on it's way to build a city and complain about it, it gets sent to the nearest neutral square, right where it was going anyway.

9. Espionage. Removing the spy/diplomat really hurt a lot of the fun I had with this option. I thought it was great sneaking behind enemy lines to execute some covert move. The abstraction as it exists now simplifies things, but it's no fun.

All in all I've got to say that I'm disappointed. I've been doing some marathon playing trying to get into it, and I haven't. First time that's happened in the Civ series. I hope some of these things are touched on in a patch, but I think most are due to some bad design decisions. The game was streamlined to make it more open to newbie players, and while some of that was good, a lot of it removed a lot of the depth and customization that could have made this a great game. I think it's safe to say that the bulk of the Civ community wanted more complexity, not less. Finding a smart way to ease the management of that complexity would have made the game accessible to the broader gaming market but left the underlying intricacy for the hard core gamer. Instead they just stripped the complex elements from the game. As it stands now, I just can't find much to sink my teeth into, and I don't think I can look forward to years of playing Civ 3.

[Spatzimaus]

Not exactly a "cheat", but here's a very very cheap way to defeat a neighboring civilization. The basic problem is that the AI doesn't view giving "Right of Passage" to an enemy as a hostile act.

What you need:
1> A railroad line going across your civilization
2> Two neighbors of roughly equal tech level (equal to each other, not equal to you); let's call them "A" and "B"

What you do:
1> Ally with civ "A" against civ "B"
2> Make peace with B. Now A is fighting B and you're neutral. Feel free to jump into the fight when it looks good.
3> Give whichever civ you want to win the Right of Passage so they can use your railroad. If you want to be really sadistic give it to both, but that tends to clog up your borders.

I'm in a game where the Greeks are on one side and the French are on the other. I'm neutral but the Greeks have right of passage, and the two are at war. The Greeks make tons of troops, and send them through my rails to attack the French. The french can't shut off the flow of troops, since they won't hurt my cities or rails, so they tie up their entire military defending my border.

[Stromprophet]

3. Strategic resources. I really like the concept, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The main thing that bugs me is not being able to find them on the map. I ran out of coal, great I'll just try and trade it with someone else or wage war on someone to get it. Unfortunately I'm in the lead tech-wise, and no one else has it as a tradable resource. Now my only option is to search the map square by square until I find someone who has it. My eyes aren't what they used to be, and it's a pain in the ass hunting for them. I went to war with the Romans just because I hoped they would have coal somewhere in their territory. Resources that other civs can't use yet should still be tradable. Not only would this make things simpler, but it would be realistic. Imperial England loved doing this sort of thing.

________________________________

Didn't England say here take some pices of crap and steal valuable stuff. That would be fun.

You can't trade these? Say if you have coal, but no one else does, you can't trade it for horses?

Hmmmmmm. I like most of the negotiation tradings, it's pretty fun.

I think going to war in search of resources is a point itself, and how important it's going to be to maintain control of these resources, do or die.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by BenNewman
1. Corruption. I can't stand the corruption model, it's too severe.

OK, maybe you can change that with the help of that game-editor? Have you checked?

2. I like the fact that you're able to have your workers automatically clear forests or jungles or be on pollution patrol, but what I really want is a worker scripting language where I can really specify what I want them to do when automated.

Order them manually on fly seems simpler and more reliable. Its a turnbased game, after all. You have all the time in the world.

3. Strategic resources. I really like the concept, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The main thing that bugs me is not being able to find them on the map.

Just change the allocation-values in the game-editor. Its that simple.

4. Trade. The AI won't accept a fair trade, or even a good trade. It has to be a great trade for them to even consider it. Unfair I say. I am not giving Mao 55 gold a turn just for his territory map.

Good! The burden should be layed on the human player. No more Civ-2 style gullible trade-deals.

5. Warning messages. I hate having to scroll all across my world map looking for cities in civil disorder.

On this one I agree with you completely. Let the player decide for himself when he wants to be warned or not. Theres no gain in reducing the popup-fest, just the introduce a click-and-drag fest instead.

6. Wonders. Lots of stuff here. First off not being able to rush them in any way except with a leader. [...] Why can't they be rushed?

They can (with help of a leader only?). You can sacrifice workers or pay your workers extra in order to make them work faster. Anyway I like above limitation.

The lack of freight/caravans to help building is a real shame too.

Than God for that. They where boring to micro-manage (especially the caravans), and caravans/freights greatly unbalanced the rushed production option into something highly unrealistic.

7. Wonder movies. They were fluff, but fluff I really liked.

Agree. If one travelling in a car for a long time, one tend appreciate a pause/reward at some road-cafe every know and then. The Wonder-movies represented that pause/reward.

8. Zone's of control. My dislike here might be just because I haven't figured out how to properly extend them yet, but the AI loved to find holes of control within your borders and set up a city in them.

Good! Finally the fortresses feels much more worthwhile to build. With them you have your zone-of-control. Also fast moving mounted or mechanized land-units have this benefit.

9. Espionage. Removing the spy/diplomat really hurt a lot of the fun I had with this option.

And thats a very good thing. It reduces micro-management, and it also let the AI-civs play much more on equal terms.

[Comrade Tribune]

Don´t have time to argue today, but I disagree with about everything Ben said. This looks like the prototypical newbie review.

As yet, my impression is that the game has been greatly improved. But it is much too early to rate the AI, on which my final verdict will depend. I did review the manual already, which is good and bad at the same time.

[BenNewman]

Originally posted by Stromprophet
I think going to war in search of resources is a point itself, and how important it's going to be to maintain control of these resources, do or die.

Let me clarify, I don't mind going to war for a resource, and I think having to do so is one of the more interesting parts of the game. My problem is that it's hard to see which civs have a resource you're looking for. Your trade advisor will tell you where resources are located within your boarders, which is good because I managed build a city on top of the one coal resource I had and would have had no idea where my coal was coming from. When it ran out i had to visualy scan the map looking for other coal resorces and I couldn't see any. Found plenty of petroleum laying around but no coal. My only other option is to right click every terrain square to see if there is a resorce I can't see under their cities or mines, and that's just too tedious to bear. I'd gladly go to war to take over a resorce if I had any idea who possesed it, but unfortunatly I don't so I'm forced to go to war against a civ hoping they have a coal deposit somewhere I can't see. I can't imagine the designers wanted to make it so tedious to find resources. Your trade advisor should list all the resource locations that you've cleared the fog of war on, or something that makes finding them a less tiresome act.

[Soren Johnson]

Originally posted by BenNewman


Let me clarify, I don't mind going to war for a resource, and I think having to do so is one of the more interesting parts of the game. My problem is that it's hard to see which civs have a resource you're looking for. Your trade advisor will tell you where resources are located within your boarders, which is good because I managed build a city on top of the one coal resource I had and would have had no idea where my coal was coming from. When it ran out i had to visualy scan the map looking for other coal resorces and I couldn't see any. Found plenty of petroleum laying around but no coal. My only other option is to right click every terrain square to see if there is a resorce I can't see under their cities or mines, and that's just too tedious to bear. I'd gladly go to war to take over a resorce if I had any idea who possesed it, but unfortunatly I don't so I'm forced to go to war against a civ hoping they have a coal deposit somewhere I can't see. I can't imagine the designers wanted to make it so tedious to find resources. Your trade advisor should list all the resource locations that you've cleared the fog of war on, or something that makes finding them a less tiresome act.

Have you tried Clean Map (Shift+Ctrl+M)? It takes all of the terraforming and cities off the map, making finding resources much easier. Also, when the patch comes out, it will also remove units...

[PGM]

quick European review

I got the game on Friday, thanks to a friend who came in from the US, (not many Europeans can say the same, so I really feel lucky ), and I've been playing non-stop of course.
A few remarks:
The game is MUCH more different from civ2 than I expected , civ3 is NOT a civ2 upgrade, believe me. It's a new experience.
I've encountered the same gameplay bugs many people have been talking about, but nothing a patch won't fix, IMHO. The interface seems a bit complicated, but after I get used to it, read the manual, and partially forget years and years of intensive civ2 gameplay, things will improve for me.
This AI is definitely clever, that's for sure. I've played just 1 game, and won at the easiest difficulty level (UN victory), but this is really obvious.
Although I'm a very experienced civ2 player, winning consistently at deity, ICS, OCC, etc., I found out that the civ3 AI can be a serious opponent, even at chieftain level, specially in its quick and clever military and expansionist tactics. I never thought I'd have any trouble winning at this level, and found out that it was still pretty hard at times.
Playing in the standard (ugly) earth map, I chose the English (my empire grew up to cover USA+Mexico+upper half of south America. The French had Alaska and west Canada, Russians had east Canada and Greenland, Germans had lower half of south America, ...).
They really threw themselves at a complete land grab, and I was very lucky to have some room to grow south (that scout really helps a lot).
Much later, when I had to go to war, even if I had a clear tech advantage, I was the one who was first invaded, by sea and land.(Russians) . And it was FAST! Since the AI knew I had musketmen and cavalry, their knights and swordmen didn't attack my cities, they decided to first heavilly pillage my strategic resources (horses, iron, etc.) instead. A total pillage that didn't take more than 3 turns, just like a lightning bolt. I couldn't believe they dared to attack me, and that they didn't throw themselves like crazy the way they did in civ2 . I wasn't expecting this clever move (lack of civ3 experience I guess, but some credit goes to the AI), nor was I expecting the following attack with stacks of different units to my cities. I was forced to offer horses to my French neighbors, who promptly attacked the Russians and helped a lot. After some time my units staved off the "infection". It was the one time in all my civ experience when I felt most happy to be in an alliance. This happened yesterday up to 6 AM (I couldn't believe the time when I looked). And did I mention that this was on chieftain level?

BEST:
AI. Great work, Soren. And the whole game is excellent.
WORST:
The game was rushed. Nothing too serious, but I have no doubt about it now. Let's wait for a good patch and a proper editor.

[Auslander]

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In just 3 days of playing I can't tell you how many city improvements I've lost because I forgot to adjust a city's happiness.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tell your Governor to handle city happiness. Who wants to micromanage entertainers?

[MDR]

Wonderful game. So far, I think it's a better stab at the Civ genre than just about anything else on the market. Detailed enough that it sucks you in, but streamlined enough that it doesn't try to get you to do everything at once (the way Ctp\Ctp2 did). So far, my only concern with the game was its tendency to group the same set of civs near each other. I've played the germans several times so far, and I keep finding myself next to the English, the Russians, and the French. As far as I can tell, it's always like this...proto-Europe, proto-America, proto-Africa\Middle East.
I hope other people can tell me I'm wrong...and not just because they want to tell me I'm wrong

[yin26]

MDR: Sorry, but it looks like you are right. We need to change this in the patch.

[MDR]

I found that out a little while ago. Though the concept is interesting...the parallels between the game and actual history is fun. For instance, I'm playing the Germans on an invasion of Russia, and I'm currently contemplating a drive for Moscow or a push south to capture Russia's last saltpeter deposit...disturbingly similar to how WWII went during the German invasion of Russia.

However, this is the third game I've played as Germany, and I'm already beginning to develop opening strategies to use against Russia, England, and France...which one is more likely to attack, who to prop up, etc.

I don't think it should be taken out entirely, just some kind of toggle will do. Another variation on the theme would be a nation of each culture type in close proximity to each other.

However, the rest of it hasn't been that much of a problem for me. The corruption has been relatively easy to handle, and I'm able to maintain a decent peace time military along side a strong tech and culture push. The resources are more or less a crap shoot. I've found out already that it's not good to go to war for certain resources if you have no supplies of your own.

Example: A war between me and my neighbor. I have no iron or horses, but my neighbor has them in abundance. I decide to try and make those resources obsolete by getting musketmen. My few musketmen are a match for the enemy army when I invade, but the fight bogs down well outside the range of the iron deposits simply because the enemy is out producing me in cheaper, lower tech stuff.

Basically, if you start out poor, you're going to remain poor without some kind of lucky break. I guess I'll have to develop a strategy around that. I'll post it here when I figure it out.

[El hidalgo]

Regarding BenNewman's point #6, about the wonders, it seems to me a specific instance of a more general problem: namely, that you can't trade production (or food). You could trade food in Civ 2, but apparently not in Civ 3, though that line of reasoning should have been expanded, not curtailed, by allowing trade in production, either between or among your own cities or with AI cities. Shields are just trees and stuff you dig up in mines; why shouldn't that be tradeable any more than wine, say, or coal (which you *also* dig up in mines)? Maybe this issue can be addressed in a patch? Or a hack...

So anyway if you could trade production, as you should be able to, then you could allocate the production of any or all of your cities to building a wonder. I should note for any that object that this is just a less tedious and more verisimilar way of accomplishing the same thing that already can be accomplished by building and disbanding units (or so I gather; I don't have the game yet).

[Auslander]

I guess there must be a good reason they left out the trade food option from Civ2.

I would have made it once a city is connected to your trade network and has a marketplace it will take a food unit from another connected city (with a marketplace) if it experiences a food shortfall. Like MOO2 does, just without the freighters.

I would have made it take two food units from another city to create one food in the shortfall city. Until the advent of railroads, thereby it could be a 1 to 1 ratio. Just to take into account food spoilage and to make things interesting.

Is this too difficult to do? I never did like the fact a city has to produce it's own food. Here in Cincinnati we don't grow everything we eat.

[LarryM]

I finished my first game yesterday (spaceship victory with the English in the 1890's on a standard random map); I've also played parts of three other games (generally up to the middle ages). Here are my impressions.

Positive - (1) The AI is great. Aside from the visible stuff - its MUCH better at fighting wars - it seems better at the less visible stuff as well. I say that because it gave me a tough game on regent (prince) level (I regularly win playing deity in Civ II). Some of the reason for that is because it was my first game, but I know this - Civ II never gave me a tough game at prince, even when I first started playing it. (2) Resources add a whole new dimension to strategy. Four critical strategic resources did not appear within my borders - rubber, aluminum, saltpeter, and coal. I really needed to work to get them - added some purpose to fighting wars. (3) Culture / borders - not nearly as big an effect on game play as resources, but a nice addition.

Negative - (1) Corruption - I understand it was a design decision, and to some extent it was needed - but they did go a bit overboard. I had less trouble with this than some people have, but that's because I really focused on keeping it to a minimum. Corruption was only about 6% in the mid-game, and just under 10% at the end (it went up because of some conquests). That's not bad - but I had democracy, a civ with the commerce bonus, only about 20 cities, all on the same continent, the forbidden palace, and courthouses in almost every city. (2) Yes, the game was obviously rushed. But most of the problems don't impact much on the single player experience, and I expect they will be fixed promptly.

Neutral - (1) Diplomacy is improved, but is still not a real strong point of the game. (2) I don't know about replayability yet - I have some fears on this count, because I suspect that the range of successful strategies may be limited (i.e., the best strategy seems to be to expand like crazy in the beginning, then settle down to a peaceful builder game, with some wars for strategic purposes). OTOH, the different civs with different characteristics, and different types of victory, may enhance replayability. But I won't know for sure without a LOT more play. (3) The interface - some good points, some annoying points. I miss the attitude advisor. Some of the problems (e.g., insufficient notice of which cities are in unrest) are going to be fixed in a patch.